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Isabelle Arsenault'sillustration style is unique and, with her new picture bookColette's Lost Petshe proves she is a unique storyteller as well. Colette's family moves to Mile End, a city neighborhood of apartment buildings, narrow back yards and alleys. With a firm and frustrated, "For the last time, NO PET!" her mother sends Colette out into the backyard and tells her to explore her new neighborhood. Running into two boys in the alley, Colette begins spinning a story about a lost pet she is looking for. The more questions the curious kids ask, the bigger the story gets, and the more kids get involved. Soon, Colette is part of a pack of kids winding through the neighborhood looking for her "truly amazing" lost pet. When Colette's mother calls her in for dinner, she sadly begins to comply. Maybe she thinks they know she was making up a story, maybe she thinks they won't want to be friends with her if she doesn't need them to help look for he…

In 2014 I reviewed Chickenhare by Chris Grine and LOVED it. The hero, Chickenhare, is a curiosity, a mash-up creature who, along with his best buddy, a rare, bearded turtle named Abe, is handed off to a collector (and taxidermist) of exotic animals. Hopefully, someday, the sequel, Fire in the Hole, will be reissued with color by Graphix, just like Chickenhare was. Happily, Grine is working on a new series, Time Shifters, in the meantime. Like Kazu Kibuishi's Amuletseries, Time Shifters begins with a tragedy. Luke and his older brother and best friend, Kyle, are exploring in the woods behind their home when an accident happens. A year later, and Luke is still grieving. But, when he sees a flash of light in the forest where his brother died, he heads out to investigate. Grine's illustration style is vivid, alternating between close-up emotional displays and detailed geographic illustrations. Through a series of mishaps, Luke ends up with a device clamped onto his arm that allows t…

Confession: When I read the flap for Apartment 1986 by Lisa Papademetriou I thought I was in for a When You Reach Me time travel story and got really excited. And, while the man who lives in apartment 1986 really does love the 80s and collects all kinds of artifacts from that period, there is no mysterious time travel, just the mystery of families and frustrations. And, while I am very glad that I read it, Apartment 1986 is the kind of book I usually pass on. Middle grade novels with first person narrators going through family struggles are hard to get right. I find they are either too solemn, too quirky or both. However, there is something about the voice of narrator Callie Vitalis that, even in her naivete, is charming. Maybe it's because, from the first page of the book, Callie is all about mindset, a concept that is huge in the educational world (and my house) and says things like, "I sort of flounce out of the store, and because I have been practicing my flouncing, I thin…

The Teacher's Pet by Anica Mrose Rissi, illustrated by Zachariah Ohora, is one of my favorite kind of books, one where the kids know better than the adult, but the adult is not presented as a buffoon. The student's in Mr. Stricter's class narrate the story, with understandable concern with Ohora's humor-filled illustrations bringing a retro feel to the book. I love Ohora's illustrations but, not wanting to give away too much about the surprise of the book, I haven't included too many illustrations here. Black endpapers call to mind a blackboard where the life cycle of a frog has been drawn in chalk. Except for one small difference you have to make sure you don't miss. The Teacher's Pet begins, "On the day the science project hatched, our whole class was amazed. We'd never seen Mr. Stricter so excited. 'I always wanted a pet,' he said." Mr. Stricter tells his students they can keep one of the tadpoles for a class pet and they choose …

Before I begin writing my own review of a book often before I even begin reading a book, I will read a handful of other reviews from a few different sources I have found to be reliable. I didn't do that with Orphan Island, the newest book by Laurel Snyder, with evocative cover and map art by David Lichtfield. I just jumped right in, slate (mostly) blank, and I'm so glad I did. Orphan Island is so many things, stirs up so many feelings and calls to mind so many moments and memories. With her writing, her world building and her protagonist Jinny, Laurel Snyder reminded me more powerfully and intimately what it felt like to be at the cusp of adolescence more than any book I have ever read, more than any trip down Memory Lane flipping through a photo album. Reading Orphan Island made me remember what it felt like to be headed into a world I could could not see ahead of me, but only imagine. What it felt like to live in a world - and a body - that seemed to be breaking apart and g…

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor came out in 2011 with superb cover art by Jillian Tamaki, co-creator, with her cousin, Mariko Tamaki, of the award winning graphic novel This One Summer. This year, in anticipation of the sequel, Akata Warrior, due out this fall, the amazingGreg Ruth created amazing covers for both books. I was working as a bookseller when Akata Witchcame out and put it on my mental to-be-read list. And, while it took me six years to circle back to it, I am so glad that I did.

In this post-Harry Potter world, it's hard not to read a novel about a child who discovers latent magical powers and goes on to fight evil without thinking about Hogwarts even a little bit. Akata Witch was published post-Potter and shares some similar elements (knives instead of wands, Lambs instead of Muggles, a funky train instead of the knight bus, an epic magical sporting match) with Harry's magical world and it was hard not to think of one realm while reading about the other. Okorafor…

Nothing Rhymes with Orange is Adam Rex's first authored and illustrated picture book since 2014. In the last three years he has illustrated books written by Neil Gaiman and Mac Barnett and written books illustrated by Christian Robinson and Scott Campbell. And, while I love everything that Rex does, especially his middle grade novels like The True Meaning of Smekday (which the movie Home was very loosely based on), I am happy to see his sense of humor on display in both the words and illustrations of this new picture book. As a kid, I remember being so amused and amazed to learn that there were a handful of words in the English language for which there is no rhyming match. Rex takes this factoid to the next level, anthropomorphizing collaged photographs of fruit by inking facial features, arms and legs on them, then letting them take center stage.

Singing rhyming songs about themselves and the wonderful things you can do with all the fruits, Orange is in the wings making comments an…